"HUMBOLDT COUNTY, Calif. — When marijuana grower Robert Sutherland moved to this rural spot back in 1973, he thought the place was like Eden. As he remembered it, he and his fellow growers were just a bunch of earnest hippies living amid Humboldt’s cool redwood forests.

They were committed to a healthy lifestyle and saw themselves as in tune with the nature surrounding them in the state’s lightly populated north.

“We held communal dinners each week, and if someone had a chainsaw, they’d share it with their neighbors,” he recalled. “We gardened organically.”"